HOUSTON - A 325-room Hyatt Regency has broken ground in the Galleria submarket, adding to the already congested construction in the area.

The new hotel will be 14 stories and 260,000 sf and is slated to open in late 2015. It will have 350-sf rooms, 20 suites, 15,000 sf of meeting space and a large fitness center overlooking a pool deck.

Developers Songy HighRd.s LLC and The Carlyle Group bought the 7.6-acre site — Galleria Plaza — at Sage and W. Alabama earlier in 2013. That acquisition included two office buildings at 5233 and 5251 Westheimer, a multitenant retail building and two standalone retail properties totaling 395,473 sf of office space and 28,920 sf of retail space. Most of the retail space will be demolished to make room for the new hotel.

Year to date, hotel occupancy in the Galleria area inched up from 2012, to 78.2 percent, with average room rates at almost $150, said Randy McCaslin of the Houston office of PKF Consulting USA.

The new hotel construction will create an estimated 800 jobs over the duration of the project, according to general contractor McCarthy Building Companies and an estimated 150 jobs after opening.